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On walking

It was, apparently, a Webber B fracture.If it had not been for the fact that my ankle
was hurting, I would have only been able to guess what part of my body that
referred to.In a disarming act of
honesty, my GP admitted the same thing.Dr. Google soon provided a more detailed answer.

If you looked at the X-Ray you could see a faint line,
running across most of the bone, just up from the base of my left fibula.But you had to look really, really hard.It did not occur to me at the time to ask if
this counted as a broken ankle.Was it
just a cracked bone?And is a cracked
bone a broken ankle? How much of a break does it need to be before it counts as
a real break?I remain ignorant on this
issue.

I had been running back from dinner with H, racing Sal and P
back to the room.A classic “it seemed
like a good idea at the time” sort of activity.Somehow I managed to overlook the fact that it was basically dark and
that the path was rough.Somehow I
managed to overlook the fact that I don’t run anywhere anymore.But, strange as it may seem, I was enjoying
it.The competitive juices were flowing
as I chased H.There was a length in my
stride that does not come with walking.Then a lightning bolt hit my left ankle.My foot rolled sharply inwards, my ankle bent into a shape that nature
never intended and made a cracking noise I don’t ever want to hear again.I swore. Probably twice.I hopped on to my right foot, which sounds a
lot more elegant than I imagine it looked, and felt sick.H noticed that I was falling over and turned
around just in time to see me sit, rather heavily, on a large stone.By this time the lightning had stopped – but
not the thunder. I was surprised how little my ankle hurt when
I put some weight on it.Maybe I had
imagined the cracking noise. I limped back to the room feeling very sorry for
myself, and more than a little stupid.

Rest. Ice. Compression. Elevation.

In other words slap on some ice and lie on the bed.The next morning the ankle was puffy and
sore.A tight bandage and painkillers
helped.Over the next 24 hours my foot
and lower leg took on the colour of bruised fruit – an unattractive combination
of browns, yellows and pale blues.Every
so often, a jolt would light up the joint and cause me to pause and suck in a
few deep breaths.

I was on holiday.So
what did I do?Strap the ankle tightly,
ask for the strongest painkillers the chemist had and get on with it.Luckily I had already done the longest walk
we planned for the trip – but I still managed to take my Webber B around Uluru
and Kata Tjuta.I watched where I put my
feet, moved slowly and found going up hill easier than going down them. Each
second step had the potential to deliver an unwelcome surprise, and it was
always good to get back on the straight and level.Back in Melbourne I was fitted with a Cam
Boot – a knee length boot to stabilise my ankle - built from plastic, steel, velcro
and discomfort.It lengthened my left
leg, leaving my right floating an inch or so from solid ground. I had to walk
from the knee rather than the ankle.For
the first time ever walking became a chore.Rough ground was off limits, and 15 minutes was about as far as I could
go.For the first time in about 30
years, I stopped walking for enjoyment.It became something to endure, not enjoy.

With my leg encased in its big black boot, I thought about
the only thing I have chosen to do wherever and when ever I have been; I
thought about walking.

I thought about the steady rhythm of walking on the flat.
The inertia of walking downhill.The
steady pull of going uphill, preferable to a steep descent.The head down effort of a steep slope, where
it is better to arrive than to travel. Hill top chocolate and coffee on a
winter’s day.The creak of the straps on
a rucksack. The click of carried objects moving in a pocket or a bag.I thought about the movement and the
peace.I wondered how long I would have
to wear the boot.

As a kid walking was as much an economic necessity as it was
anything else.The local bus services
were erratic, the family car unavailable to me and (if the truth be told), the
distances to anywhere I wanted to go, short.I walked to go fishing, I walked to buy the paper, and once I was
returning to an empty house, I walked home from school. At the time this was not unusual, although the
lack of a bike was.I did not think
about why I walked, I just walked.It
was only later, much later, that I began to understand why I found such comfort
in putting one foot in front of another, in walking to Norton to buy The
Guardian, in retracing familiar pathways, in the evening ritual of a walk.

When you think about it, the biomechanics of walking are one
of the first truly complex things we master – although “mastery” may be an
inappropriate description of the first toddler’s steps which look more like barely
controlled forward falling than walking.These first steps are recorded in family history, mythologised and
passed down from person to person, from generation to generation.Being upright on two legs separates us from
the other apes, even if teenagers, Friday drinkers and most politicians seem to
have forgotten this. Walking – bipedalism – makes us human.If I lost the will to walk, I think some part
of me would have died.

Even on a short lunchtime walk, back from a sandwich and
coffee, you can feel the simple biological pleasure of walking.If you pay attention you can feel the
alternating tension and relaxation in your legs – tight here, looser there.You can feel the pressure drop away from one
knee and build in the other.You can
feel the flex of ankles, and if you are like me, you can still feel a little
stiffness in one.You can feel your feet
move within your shoes, so that all of your socks wear in the same place.Even if the are the same colour, I can tell
my socks from Sal’s by the pattern of thin spots as well as the size.Mine wear just above the base of my heels, to
the inside of each foot.On long walks
in the past I would make sure I put my socks on different feet at the start of
the day, and for a few minutes at least I was sure I could tell the difference.

Although I don’t know why he did it, my father mapped all
the footpaths that criss-crossed the parish in which I was born.There is a book on the shelves in our front
room that has a copy of that map in it.I can recognise the way he used a ruler to write along, giving all the
letters a regular flat bottom.The paths
defy any linear behaviour, twisting across the page, linking places together
that make no sense in a modern landscape, but reflect some older purpose. That
this man, who had a serious limp, and for whom walking was a challenge, should
have mapped the footpaths on which I walked is only one of the many
contradictions in a person who I don’t think I ever really knew.

I used to start most of my evening walks by cutting up
though a path that our family, and nobody else that I knew, called The Drang.
It passed old broken cottages and elder filled gardens.The stone stile of the top was polished
smooth by generations of hands and feet.The last time I walked along it a handrail had been added along part of
the walled section, as if the only people who would use a path like this today
were old.There were weeds growing
through the broken pavement.I can’t
help but wonder if I will be one of the last people to know this path’s name.

Over the smooth stone stile was Wells Road; a road as busy
as it got in our village.The path ran
around the edges of a garage – a petrol station – and out into the open fields
that ringed our village and formed a no man’s lands between it and the
next.Muddy in the winter, dusty in in
rare weeks of sunshine and often paved by diary cows, the path passed through 3
or 4 (memory fails) kissing gates for which I seldom had much use. The grass grew rich and green, blessed by the
two virtues of Somerset – abundant rain and mild temperatures.I rarely met anybody coming in the other
direction and don’t recall anybody walking past me.I sometimes wondered if I was the only person
who kept the path walked.

Just before you passed through the last of the kissing gates
and into a patch of woodland there was a row of large, stately, sycamore trees.In the evening the setting sun would throw
spears of light through the flicker leaves. In winter flocks of longtailed tits would
flash from twig to twig; tiny bundles of life, cartoon birds.Parts of the trunks had been rubbed smooth by
itchy cows.You only notice such things
if you walk.One step at a time.Day after day.

The woodland was always damp and moss hung in limp bundles
from a high wooden fence that ran along the path.Over the fence, forever out of reach, were
the grounds of a private school.I
thought this part of the path smelled of privilege, but it was just decay. The
path had a purpose; linking two villages.But I walked along it for different reasons.I walked to get away from the claustrophobia
of home, where long silences built a pressure that pushed me out of the
door.I walked to move away, rather than
to arrive.

I have no idea how old the path was; in a place as historied
as England who can ever be sure?But
like all of the paths mapped out by my father’s hand they had a history that
you could only find by walking.At night
they were still fox trotted and in the distant past they may have been bear
footed. Some, although not my nightly
path, had sunk into the ground to become hollow ways, sunken roads.I knew of one where you could still see the
deep ruts on either side of a central hump that had been cut by cartwheels.The last time I walked that path it was a
tunnel of hazel, with catkins swinging like pale lanterns.There were patches of soft smooth mud where
mine were the only footprints.Some were
bridle paths – horses allowed.Some
followed the ghosts of railroads.We
called these Tow-Paths, but that was just our name for them and when the
railways closed they were soon lost to bracken and bramble.

Trails, paths, greenways, sunken ways, lichways for the
dead, tracks for cooper, coal and wood.Roman roads in England, English roads in Scotland; straight paths to
bring people to heel. Drove roads, close cropped by sheep, along the hilltops,
away from the then uncleared valleys. Walks through woodland, marked only by a
slight flattening of the ground and the presence of unexpected gates. Walking
to old ponds, coppice corners and woodburners’ huts. Walking to piles of deep
moss stones, tumbled, rank with nettles keeping company with the fruiting
ghosts of old orchards. Even though I
knew they were not, such places always felt unfound and mine alone.

Each one of these can be walked today as they were walked in
the past.By the same process. Step by
step.Stride by stride. And as fitness
and desire allows, in the same time.Walking
the paths to gain the empathy of landscape, the sympathy of slope, the history
of passage.Walking the paths to take
away the pressure of today and the apprehension of tomorrow. I walked through
the afternoon before my mother died, unable to do anything but walk away.I was walking by the sea when the phone rang
to tell me my father would be joining her.One along the damp April roads and paths of Somerset, the other on a
beach that squeaked, almost as far south as you can be and still be on the
mainland of Australia.Walks that were a
lifetime and a world apart.I walked
when I feared that madness would take me over, and the rhythm of footfall and
the motion would lift the veil to let me see.

Walking connects you to a place like nothing else can. If
connection to a place is a true expression of the human self – the soul if you
are that way inclined – you have to wonder if soul has been misspelt.

In Australia many, but not all of the paths, are
different.Some paths are marked by song
and are basically unknowable to me.They
are disconnected by time, language and assumption.The paths around my house are straight, the
corners regular; return journeys can be planned by the logic of geometry. Most are no older than my house, sitting on
its ruler drawn block, with straight-line fences and predictable edges.But I still walk.The heartbeat regularity of footsteps brings
the same relaxation as of old.I no
longer walk back to an empty house, even when nobody is home.In parks and coast the paths are there for a
new purpose; to walk.Not to go where
things happen, but just to walk to where you can watch.To look at the scenery, to look at the
birds.To walk to the place where you
can take that photograph – the one you see in the books.Some paths seem to walk to the X that marks
the spot.They seem to have no other
purpose.But that purpose is still good
enough for a walk.

Even if the purpose and history of my paths has changed, my
boots still crease in the same places, and the soles still wear in the same
way.I walk to explore, to find what you
can see and see the things that are otherwise hidden.The cam boot is underneath my desk, a
reminder of what it was like to have briefly lost walking.To remind me how important the rhythm of walking
is.To remind me to push back the chair
and go for an evening walk.

Gentle, philosophical and oh, so well written and felt. Yes, the act of walking, not on hard city streets but in landscape, has great healing properties, both of body and of soul.I enjoy reading your sporadic essays and hope you will put them together at some stage into a book.Thank you.

Nice. I discovered a couple of years ago that "drang" is a local dialect word for a passage between rows of houses. I wonder if we capitalzed it in our heads. I can certainly remember the row of terraces on the right before they were partially demolished - iirc I even found a suggestion that our grand or perhaps great grand parents lived in them for a while.ZKB

Amazing shots- and I agree with you about what an agony it would be to not be able to walk the beautiful paths we love. When I twisted my ankle and ripped my knee open last year, I thought I was done for. I have declared myself too dangerous to exercise outdoors anymore, but I still love to walk in the fresh air...slowly...it sucks getting old...but I would sure like to not hasten to the rocking chair if I can help it!

Stewart it's amazing how one can get so accustomed to things such as walking that it becomes habit, taken for granted, and not even thought about, one foot in front of the other, again and again and again... until something such as the cracked bone sets one back. It seems after healing, then the real appreciation for all working body parts sets in, only in time to be forgotten about and we take those same steps over and over again without thinking twice of it.

Your photos are so beautiful, the path which seems out of place in nature is one I'd love to explore, just to see where it might take me.

HI Stewart Great post, great read and wonderful photography. Now regarding your 'crack' in your ankle, Incomplete fracture: A fracture in which the bone fragments are still partially joined. In such cases, there is a crack in the osseous tissue that does not completely traverse the width of the bone. Does this answer you query?

Walking - I am so fortunate to be able to walk after a severe tri-maleolar fracture over 20 years ago. The radiologist who xrayed my ankle thought I would not be able to walk again, so I am SO THANKFUL I can! I hope your ankle is doing well and you are able to walk those beautiful paths without pain!

As someone who has been walking for pleasure all my life - OK, not for the first year or so - your writing echoed so many of my own feelings and reminded me of how lucky I am to live in a country where walking is still easy to do. I think I know where I'll be on my next day off work.

A wonderful tribute to walking.. May you forever be an explorer, Stewart, connected to the earth with the souls of your feet. Glad the boot is off! Good to remember to count our blessings now & then, especially the biggest ones that go most overlooked. Like the ability to get up & go.

A very interesting read. It brought back memories of the paths I walked as a kid - across the fields, down to the pond, to visit the neighbor children. Thanks.When my mother-in-law broke her toes, they put her foot in a boot-thingy, and provided a sandal-like thing to slip over the shoe on her other foot to make walking more level. Still awkward to walk, but kept an uneven gait from causing back pain. Wishing you a speedy recovery, and many more paths to walk!Lea

You captured the beauty of being able to walk wonderfully. I am so sorry about your injury.... I hope your post will inspire people to get out and walk and be thankful for the ability to do it.... Michelle

Thanks for your comment on my book review. I also have a nature blog and love to hike and take pictures so naturally I really enjoyed this post as well. A trip to Australia is definitely on our bucket list....:)